


Transliteration

by galaxysoup



Category: Green Hornet (2011)
Genre: Character of Color, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-27
Updated: 2011-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-25 23:58:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxysoup/pseuds/galaxysoup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Britt talks. Kato acts. Lenore mostly just wants to not have to deal with either of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transliteration

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted to [Livejournal](http://galaxysoup.livejournal.com/18782.html#cutid1).

It only takes Lenore ten minutes after getting in to work to figure out that something’s really wrong.

First off, Britt and Kato beat her in, which is theoretically possible but actually not. Secondly, Britt’s in his office shouting at anyone who comes near and Kato’s sitting in the armchair beyond her desk, sketching.

Granted, neither of these things are technically unusual, in and of themselves. Britt often shouts at people, but today instead of “Dude, that shit was _unreal!_ Did you see that? That was _off the hook!_ ” he’s shouting things like “I told you to get me that five minutes ago!” and “You’re late!” (She’s not.)

It’s worrying. It’s even more worrying when Lenore peeks over Kato’s shoulder and sees that, instead of schematics or pretty anime girls, Kato’s drawing a picture of Britt. On fire.

Lenore considers. On the one hand, they put her through enough already and they can damn well sort it out themselves.

On the other hand, the last time they stopped speaking to each other they blew up the _Sentinel_.

“Kato, did you and Britt have a fight?” she asks, resigning herself to an unbearable day.

“Idiot.” Kato grits.

“I beg your pardon?”

“ _Him._ Idiot.”

“Well, yes,” Lenore says, very carefully. “But Kato, I mean... that’s not really _news_.”

Kato scowls. “With him, words, words, words. Why watch bad guys? Talk is much better! Turn his back on an armed man to make a funny joke, _much_ more important.” He draws an axe through Britt’s head.

“Oh,” Lenore says encouragingly.

“I put Kevlar in his suit, I make him gas gun for distance, still he goes right up and turns around. Can’t build a helmet, _he_ won’t wear it - still he goes right up and turns around!”

“ _Oh,_ ” Lenore says. Behind her, Britt’s yelling at someone over the phone. Lenore spares a moment to hope it isn’t anyone important - she really needs to disable outgoing calls on that thing somehow.

She refocuses. “Did you tell him that was why you were angry?”

Kato stares at her like she’s crazy, which is pretty rich. “Kevlar in his suit, gas gun for distance!”

“I mean,” Lenore hesitates, not quite sure she can get it out with a straight face. “Did you use your words?”

Kato looks away, fingering his pencil. “Kevlar, gas gun,” he mutters rebelliously.

“Okay, Kato, but maybe you could try using some words next time?” Lenore suggests. “Britt’s more of a words guy, he might not have understood the gesture.”

Kato shoves the sketchbook in his pocket and stalks out. Lenore sighs. On Kato, that could either mean “I agree with you and I’m going to go do something about it,” or it could mean “Fuck you all, I’m going to go join the circus.”

Kato would probably make a killing at the circus, actually.

Okay, bad word choice.

Lenore takes a deep breath, and heads in to tackle Britt.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Kato stomps down the street outside the _Sentinel_ , swearing under his breath in Chinese. Stupid Britt. He knows Britt’s not the sharpest tool in the toolbox, and he finds that alternately endearing and frustrating depending on the day, but honestly - if Britt’s weapons designer genius best friend lines his suits with Kevlar (should have done that before the showdown at the _Sentinel_ , and that thought still burns in his gut) and pointedly gives him lots of distance weapons to use (never had to train Britt to aim that well, that’s actual talent at work) he should really be able to understand that a) he should try not to get killed and b) he should stay at a distance as much as possible.

Kato scowls. Britt had handled himself pretty well when they had that fight in the gatehouse, when he was up against Kato who was angry but mostly trying not to hurt him too badly, but as soon as he was faced with ten armed men trying to kill him?

Forget it. Getting overexcited and jumping up and down a lot is not a fighting style, it’s a neon sign saying “Shoot me - I probably won’t notice!”

Kato sighs and stops to lean against a convenient wall, watching the traffic go by. He really likes Britt. He’s never had a friend quite like him. Britt’s got a big heart and a good imagination and he’s bewilderingly _open_ , which Kato mostly finds terrifying when he isn’t being charmed by it, but there’s no protection on the man at all - not physical, not emotional. Nothing. And he seems to have imagined himself into believing he's an unstoppable fighting machine, when really that's Kato's job.

Kato’s never really had to protect someone like that before. On the streets, it was survival of the fittest. If you needed protection, that was your own lookout. Nobody was going to give it to you. The idea of having to chase Britt around, desperately trying to keep him away from bad people and stray bullets and sharp corners...

Well. Kato has _no idea_ what he’s doing. And Britt, wandering around happily in the dark, certainly isn’t helping matters.

He frowns. Maybe Lenore was right. Kato’s definitely a gestures person - even when he’s using his native language - and Britt does have a history of misunderstanding Kato’s gestures. He’d responded better to the written use of ‘xiongdi’ than he had to the presentation of the gas gun, after all.

The problem, now, becomes how to bridge that gap. Kato could build a communications system - he actually already has a really cool idea about secretly linking the garage and Britt’s gatehouse and putting Britt’s receiver in the suit of armor, which he thinks Britt would think is hilarious - but he’d still have to actually _use_ it. His written English is a little better than his conversational skills, which is a thought, but still...

He groans, frustrated, and decides to head back to the office. Lenore is their mastermind, after all - maybe she’ll have an idea.

He’s just turning the corner below the _Sentinel_ building when something catches his eye. Through the window of the office supplies store next to the bus stop he can see a display of those little sticky pad things.

 _Green_ sticky pad things.

Kato grins.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Lenore knocks on Britt’s office door and lets herself in before he can object. “Hey - do you have a second?”

“Yeah, fine. What?” He doesn’t even bother looking at her breasts. That’s a bad sign.

She perches herself on the arm of one of his ridiculous ‘awesome’ guest chairs and tries to look attentive. It’s for the good of the _Sentinel_ , after all, and particularly for the good of getting to avoid the soul-killing experience of job-hunting for as long as possible.

“Did you and Kato have some kind of fight?”

Britt scowls and throws down a folder of something. “I don’t even _know_ , okay? He just gets all pissy and won’t talk to me. He’s stupid.”

Lenore never did much babysitting when she was a kid. She’s really kind of regretting that, now. “Well, what happened _before_ that?”

Britt rolls his eyes. “We were checking out this place on the waterfront - you know, the one you found?”

Lenore nods. That information had been a pain in the butt to ferret out, and had required more cleavage aimed in the direction of the City Hall records boys than she’s strictly comfortable admitting to.

“So we go in, and there’s like two guys, and there’s a little kid hiding under one of the tables, I dunno why. So I told Kato to get the kid out, and I went for the guys, and now he’s being stupid.”

Britt is, at least, easier to read than Kato - that’s not even most of the story. “Are you telling me everything?” she asks, pitching her voice the way Mrs. Strachan used to do in Kindergarten.

It works, of course, because Britt is secretly a ten-year-old. His mouth tightens, but he caves immediately. “Kato was really mean to the kid,” he says, fidgeting with one of his pens. “I mean, she was little and she was scared, and he just kept yelling at her, and she was crying, so I tried to make her stop crying, and he yelled at me instead. And now he won’t talk to me, and I don’t want to talk to him either.” He crosses his arms and pouts. Kato might have been able to pull off a scowl with that line, but Britt really can’t.

And, okay, Lenore knows enough about Britt’s childhood to know why yelling would set him off, and from the little she knows of Kato’s she can understand why this little plot twist didn’t even make his radar. At the same time, it’s so completely _them_ that she wants to beat them both soundly about the head. Kato saw only the physical danger and reacted to it, Britt saw only the emotional danger and reacted to _that_ , and now _of course_ they’re both convinced the other one’s completely irrational. And mean.

 _Honestly._

“Where were the bad guys during all this?”

Britt waves that off. “I dunno, behind me somewhere. Kato went to town on them and I went and got the kid. Turned out her parents are Splitsville and that was quality time with Dad.” The bitterness in his voice is both easy to hear and easy to understand, even for someone who never met his redoubtable father.

Britt sighs and tosses the pen down. He might be trying to come off as irritated with the gesture, but he winds up looking more forlorn than anything. “Well, you’re the mastermind. What do you think?”

Lenore allows herself a moment to ponder. Kato’s side of the story had been pretty easy. One of them communicates with words, one communicates with gestures, show each of them how to do the reverse and there you go - they’re back in the Black Beauty causing property damage, and she’s in her apartment enjoying reruns of _NCIS_.

Britt’s side, unfortunately, is a little more complex. She’s got Kato, overprotective and not very good at dealing with it, and she’s got Britt, who would probably be starting to suspect that his best friend is some kind of sociopath if he knew what the word meant. If only she could find some way to teach Britt to use gestures while simultaneously teaching Kato to be more emotional -

Huh.

 _That’s_ a crazy idea. In fact, it may be downright stupid.

Perfect.

“Britt,” she says, dead serious. “I think you need to get Kato a kitten.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Britt’s really, really not sure about this.

It had sounded pretty good when Lenore explained it to him in his office. Think about Kato’s childhood, she’d said, and Britt didn’t really want to because he saw _Slumdog Millionaire_ when he was drunk once and he thinks it might have been kind of like that, and the only part he’d really liked about that movie was the end when the hot chick had been doing that thing with her hips. So far, Lenore’s the only hot chick in Kato’s life that Britt knows about, and she’s smoking but Britt’s pretty sure she can’t dance like that.

Anyway, he’d thought about Kato’s childhood, and that had made him a little confused because he didn’t think Kato would want to be mean to kids if people had been mean to him when he was a kid, but Lenore explained that he probably didn’t know any different, and okay, Britt could kind of understand that. Kato’s pretty practical, if he’d thought that the fastest way to get the kid out was to yell at her, then that kind of made sense, even if it was actually totally stupid.

He still hadn’t gotten why Kato was mad at him, though. Kato gets these _moods_ , and he won’t talk about them but it happens, like, _all the freaking time_ , and Britt’s really getting sick of it. It’s not like Kato ever seems to _get_ anything out of it except probably some killer frown lines in a couple of years. Lenore had said that maybe Kato was upset because Britt had been in danger and Kato was worried about him, which Britt privately thought was stupid because he’s a _badass superhero_ , hello.

But then he remembered that night in the ruins of the _Sentinel_ , being a whole room away and seeing Chudnofsky with his gun to Kato’s head and Kato laid out flat and pinned to the floor, and... yeah, okay. Kato’s a badass superhero too, but Britt _had_ been pretty worried.

He’s still not sure how all of that got him to the Humane Society and face-to-face with a box full of kittens, but when he asked about that part Lenore had told him to shut up and just do it. He’s pretty sure she’d had a headache at that point, so he was willing to overlook the attitude. Headaches totally suck.

“It’s hard to choose between them, isn’t it?” the attendant says sympathetically.

Britt’s about to agree, because what the hell is he even doing here and anyway he’s man enough to admit that kittens are freaking adorable and how _do_ you choose, oh God he’s going to end up, like, a _crazy cat lady_ if he can’t pick just one... but then he spots a little gray-and-white kitten in the back. She’s snuck up behind one of the others, and as he watches she does, like, a _flying ninja kitten deathleap_ and totally owns the fluffy orange one.

“ _Definitely_ that one.”

She’s even looks like she’s wearing a little gray mask.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Kato gets to work early the next morning. Even if he were the type to sleep in, he’s too nervous.

At about nine thirty, Britt barrels into the garage holding a handful of green sticky notes. He trips over the oil drum Kato had carefully placed in his way but recovers his balance nearly a full second faster than last time, which Kato allows himself a moment to be secretly pleased by.

“Kato - you - “ Britt gestures, uselessly, and the _Don’t get killed_ sticky note flutters to the floor. “I - “

Kato finds, of course, that he doesn’t know what to say. He hadn’t actually planned this part, which in retrospect was a pretty big flaw in his plan.

Britt comes closer. “I - I got your notes, they’re... green.”

“Hornet green,” pops out of Kato’s mouth without his permission.

“Yeah,” Britt sniffles a little, and Kato politely looks away while he uses _You are the best friend I have ever had_ to wipe his face. It doesn’t work very well, because sticky notes are not absorbent at all, but they both pretend it did.

“Kato, man, I’m sorry but I have to give you a hug now.”

Kato draws back in alarm. “Please don’t.”

Britt laughs a little. “Yeah, okay. We can work up to that, maybe.”

Long practice keeps the look of horror off Kato’s face. Well, mostly.

Britt doesn't notice, of course. He brightens suddenly. “Hey, I got you a present, too.”

“Oh?” Kato is definitely intrigued. He wants to see what ‘present’ consists of in Britt’s mind.

“Yeah, come on!”

Kato follows him up to the gatehouse. Britt makes him close his eyes and hold out his hands, which Kato reluctantly does, and the next thing he knows he’s holding something... little. And warm. And _sharp_.

He opens his eyes in surprise. A tiny gray-and-white kitten stares insolently back at him.

“Isn’t she cute?” Britt gushes.

Kato bites back his first response (“What am I supposed to do with it?”) and his second (“I don’t need a pet, I’ve already got you.”) and goes with his third: “Oh!”

Britt shifts excitedly from foot to foot. “So, I was thinking, we’re pretending to be bad guys but we’re really good guys, right? And good guys protect people. So, I thought, we should practice protecting people! Particularly small people. Like children!” He leans in a little closer. “I was going to get you a kid to practice protecting, but Lenore said that was probably illegal.”

 _Oh, Lenore,_ Kato thinks faintly. _That explains a lot._ “I see.”

Britt starts to look a little worried. “Do you like her? I picked her because she’s, like, a ninja badass kitten. And see? She’s got a little mask!”

Kato looks. She does have gray markings around her eyes that are a kind of mask-like, if one is being extremely optimistic. She’s also clinging to his hands so tightly with her claws that he may have to learn how to fix cars with his feet.

Experimentally, he moves his hands in closer to his chest. The claws retract slightly. Aha.

“I haven’t named her yet,” Britt says, looking a little more hopeful. “I thought you could name her? Maybe something cool but little, like Bumblebee?”

 _More like Bee Sting,_ Kato thinks, wincing a little.

Britt is watching him expectantly.

“Yes, I will think,” Kato allows, finally. “She is very... small. And... and fluffy.”

Britt beams. “I knew you’d like her!”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Lenore’s about three steps into the office when the situation hits her in the side of the head, almost exactly like a small gray kitten. She staggers.

“ _What_ \- “

Behind her, Britt laughs delightedly. “ _Awesome!_ Kato, your kitten totally just ninja-kicked Lenore in the _head!_ ”

Lenore gapes. The kitten gambols across the floor and vanishes beneath her desk.

“Sorry,” Kato says from his position in one of the armchairs, not sounding very. “She is still learning. Her aim...” He trails off, shrugging expressively.

Britt gasps. “Kato, are you training a ninja attack kitten? That is the _best idea ever!_ ”

Lenore takes a moment to really, really hate her life.

"It is only sense," Kato says, and adds meaningfully, "I can only protect her so far."

Lenore feels her eyes widen. That sounded almost... emotionally self-aware?

Britt nods. "Totally. I _get_ that, man. I mean, she's your kitten - she's gotta protect herself to protect _you_ , you know?"

 _Wait,_ Lenore thinks. _Hang on. That was... that was a_ moment. _They just had a moment! That was practically communication!_

"Isn't she the best kitten ever?" Britt asks, managing to take his attention off Kato for a moment.

Lenore's just about ready to nominate the kitten for sainthood, ninja-kick or not.

"She's really cute," she says instead. “What’s her name?”

“Bumblebee,” Britt says, just as Kato says “No name.”

They stare at each other.

There is a complex silence.

“As kitten of Green Hornet’s nameless partner, most appropriate that she is also nameless,” Kato says finally.

“Wait, did you guys just have a whole silent communication moment?” Lenore asks, truly shocked.

“Nameless is a great name,” Britt says earnestly. “I really like it.”

“Never mind,” Lenore mutters.

Kato's mouth quirks. “Nameless, then,” he agrees. “Maybe Bumblebee for short.”

They smile at each other. It’s totally another Moment.

Lenore decides it's all right to admit that she might just be the best mastermind _ever_. She’s absolutely giving herself a raise for this.

“Best mastermind _ever_ ,” Britt murmurs in her ear, and she swings abruptly from smugly ecstatic to horrified because dear God if she’s made Britt psychic she may have to flee the country and change her name.

She only has a moment of stunned reflection in which to wonder what she’s done to _Kato_ when the kitten reappears from underneath Lenore’s desk, chasing a pink plastic ball with a jinglebell in it. As one, Lenore and Britt turn to stare at him.

“Reflex training,” Kato says serenely, and raises his sketchpad slightly. “Also, I am designing her armor. We can put a cushion up front in Black Beauty.”

“Kick _ass_ ,” Britt breathes.

Lenore sighs. _At least they're communicating,_ she reminds herself firmly. _It would be ridiculous to hope for maturity on top of it all._

 _For maturity, it might take more than one kitten..._


End file.
